Lazada’s helloPay joins Ant Financial's family

helloPay announced its merger with Alibaba's Ant Financial Services Group last Wednesday (19 April 2017).

Established in November 2014, helloPay is a payment platform for Southeast Asian e-tailer Lazada. Lazada is related to Alibaba after the latter bought a major share for US$1 billion in 2016.

To be operated by Ant Financial from its Singapore office, helloPay will be rebranded as Alipay Singapore, Alipay Malaysia, Alipay Indonesia and Alipay Philippines in the respective markets.

Despite the rebranding, all of helloPay's features and services will remain unchanged and the rebranded helloPay will remain separate from Ant Financial Services Group's Alipay app.

"There will be no impact to helloPay's users and payment partners. We will continue to innovate and provide users with safe, fast and convenient payment services," said Douglas Feagin, Senior Vice President of Ant Financial.

Earlier this month, the company partnered Indonesia's Elang Mahkota Teknologi (Emtek) to develop local financial services. They will start off by creating a payments platform within BlackBerry's messaging service, which has about 63 million monthly active users in Indonesia, according to a joint press release.

In February, Ant Financial invested in Mynt, a financial venture by Philippines' Globe Telecom. The funds will be used to help Mynt scale its GCash service that is aimed at the underserved and unbanked consumers in the Philippines.

Ant Financial has also invested in Ascend Money last November to grow the latter's payments and financial services in Thailand. A subsidiary of Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand, Ascend Money provides payment services such as domestic and international remittance, bill payment, top up services, online and offline payments and payroll targeted at the underserved consumers.